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Privilege, entitlement, death

THE daylight, public murder of the wife and the near-fatal attack on the son of a judge by his personal security officer (PSO) throw up a lot of questions.

Privilege, entitlement, death

If at all, voters need protection from practicing and aspiring politicians of the heartland.



Rajesh Ramachandran

THE daylight, public murder of the wife and the near-fatal attack on the son of a judge by his personal security officer  (PSO) throw up a lot of questions. Mahipal, known only by his first name, is the PSO who turned predator from guardian in a matter of a few minutes and over a purported argument; an absolutely scary proposition for a region that has a lot of people with PSOs. Unlike some other safer parts of the country, it is impossible to visualise a politician or a senior official in Punjab or J&K who is not shadowed by a gun-wielding guard. This region has shed a lot of blood to remain normal or almost normal, at best. Even now, the seeming normalcy is but a thin facade, which can crumble in no time and for no reason. Memories of the fight against militancy are still alive and fresh. So are the forces seeking revenge. There are many who had spent their entire lives  fighting those dark forces which have now receded into the shadows in Punjab or still out in the open in J&K. And these officials undoubtedly need protection. That is the least society can offer to those who have sought to secure the lives and property of an entire population. An officer or a functionary of the government who had to take tough decisions for the larger public good should not be made to pay with her life for those noble deeds. That principle is non-negotiable.

Now, that brings us to the next logical question. Who else deserves security? Why did the son of a former MP need a gun or worse brandish it outside a five-star hotel last week in Delhi? Offering arms licences to badly brought-up, privileged kids is actually a grave threat to society. Any MLA worth his starched, white kurta from the Hindi heartland as a matter of entitlement gets a PSO, whom he uses like his servant, driver and at times even his personal goon. With so many gangsters of the Gangetic plains aspiring to be legislators, the plight of these personal security guards could be easily visualised. It would almost be akin to the government hiring and training cops and nominating them to one gangster’s gang or the other, paying their salaries all this while. It is high time the government had a relook at the policy of mechanically offering security guards to politicians.

Why blame just politicians? In the mid-1990s there used to be a news photographer at Delhi’s Indian Newspaper Society building. Nobody really knew where he worked. The INS used to be the hub of all regional newspapers, which had a journalistic presence in Delhi, and this photographer would hangout at a tea stall outside the building. He would gatecrash every political press conference and would be right at the feet of the neta, waiting for the pearls of wisdom. In just a matter of a couple of years, he too got a PSO with the side arm prominently displayed. If it is so easy for a jobless journalist hanging a worthless camera around his neck to have a government employee guarding him round-the-clock, that too in the national capital, there is a serious problem with the very phenomenon of PSOs.

Security has to be divorced from the feudal idea of social hierarchy masquerading as VIP culture. Scarce government resources should not get allocated for people to feel important or to exhibit their importance. We urgently need a national register of officials who need PSOs. Everybody understands the threat of LTTE or its fragments to the top politicians or officials of Tamil Nadu. There was a terrible and almost successful attempt on Andhra Pradesh CM Chandrababu Naidu’s life not long ago. The Maoists keep hunting down politicians in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. But that does not justify any security for a Kerala or Karnataka politician and there is actually a visible and marked scaling down of security for top politicians and officials as we cross the border and step into Kerala or Karnataka. Punjab and J&K politicians, officials and senior serving and retired functionaries do need protection. But do their counterparts in Haryana or Delhi or Uttar Pradesh or Bihar need it? If at all, the hapless voters need protection from practicing and aspiring politicians of the heartland. So is the case with officials. Why spend government money on security guards for officials without any analysis of a threat perception? Every state government should have a list of people who need security, which has to be vetted by the Union Home Ministry. Any politician found misusing this facility --- like making the PSO cook, serve, drive, clean, shop or walk the dog --- should lose it immediately. Once this “official servitude” considered a perk of the job is barred by law, most of the politicos would on their own surrender their entitlement because they know they face no threat.

Now, coming back to Mahipal, it is indeed sad that there was no language of conciliation between the PSO and the judge’s family. According to newspaper reports, Mahipal felt insulted and in a sudden explosion of uncontrollable rage he turned his weapon against an unarmed mother and son. This is a bundle of contradictions, a case of a victimised servant, who is also a protector turning into an aggressor and a murderer. The judge has lost grievously. Mahipal will lose his job, his family, his freedom and most probably his life. Instead, all he had to do was to have registered his protest, at a personal level or a public platform. Even a social media post, like that of the BSF jawan complaining about the dal, could have brought in relief. But life in uniform gets so de-humanised that murder often becomes an easier solution than conversation. That the hierarchy of oppression and violence can get reversed quicker than the utterance of a hurtful jibe is a grave message.

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